Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Editorial: "Red Notice"

Interpol is an “international” police organization headquartered in France. Its secretary general is a former U.S. government official, Ronald Noble. Noble comes from the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who made Noble his Undersecretary of the Treasury for Enforcement in 1993.

The U.S. and France are therefore big players in Interpol. They are also two of the leading imperialist powers behind NATO’s military assault on the government of Libya.

Article 3 of Interpol’s constitution forbids it from “intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.” Shouldn’t this prevent it from aiding and abetting the imperialists in their efforts to destroy the government of Libya?

On Sept. 9 Interpol announced it was issuing a “Red Notice” to its 188-member countries telling them to arrest Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, his son Saif Al-Islam Gadhafi and former director of military intelligence Abdullah Al-Senussi. The move came after the International Criminal Court — based in The Hague — issued arrest warrants for the three on charges of “crimes against humanity.”

The ICC has never even considered issuing warrants against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for their crimes against humanity — attacking and occupying Iraq on the completely bogus pretext that it possessed “weapons of mass destruction.” An estimated 1 million Iraqis perished from war wounds and the massive destruction of that country’s infrastructure. Isn’t that a crime against humanity? Or doesn’t the ICC consider the Iraqi people to be human?

In the modern world there are many so-called international agencies that claim to act in the interests of the world’s people. The assumption is that there are universal standards that can be applied equally to people everywhere. The assumption is also that the richest, most powerful countries are in the best position to decide these standards and then enforce them.

All this runs counter to actual experience. The interests of all countries are not the same. And the interests of the social classes inside these countries are not the same, either.

A country like Libya broke away from the heritage of colonialism in 1969 through a revolution that nationalized its oil — the mainstay of its economy, which had been exploited by Italy, France, the U.S. and Britain. It does not share common interests with Italy, its former colonial overlord, or with Britain, France and the U.S.

No matter how much the politicians and press of these imperialist countries claim that Moammar Gadhafi, who led the Libyan revolution, is a monster who mistreats his own people and therefore should be arrested, they are only repeating the propaganda of the oil companies, which want a free rein to exploit Libya as they did in the past.

The ICC and Interpol don’t just speak and act in the interests of the imperialist countries, all of them former colonial oppressors. These organizations are tools of the ruling capitalist classes in those countries. They do not in any way represent the interests of the workers in the U.S. or Europe, although they would like to be seen as fair, impartial, neutral, apolitical and all the rest. Doesn’t Interpol’s constitution say it can’t be political or military? Yet what is more political and military than aiding in the physical destruction of a government?

Contemporary events cannot be understood without knowing that there is no such thing as “justice” in the abstract. Society is divided into classes, and nations are divided between oppressors and oppressed.

The “justice” meted out by these so-called international organizations is imperialist justice that puts the oppressed into the dock while allowing the oppressors to walk free.

What the people of the world need — those who toil every day or can’t even find work in this bankrupt capitalist global economy — is to break free from the institutions dominated by finance capital so they can erect a society that metes out truly human justice — and puts above all by guaranteeing the human rights to food, health, shelter, work and education. These are the human rights that are being violated right now, in every capitalist country, on a massive scale, without a word of reproach from the “International” Criminal Court or the “International” Criminal Police Organization, Interpol.